The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished  2000–1150 BC, It is agreed among scholars that the Andronovo culture was Indo-Iranian. Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon.

Andronovo culture's first stage may have started as early as the waning years of the 3rd millennium BC, with a focus on cattle grazing in the vast grasslands of the region. The slightly older Sintashta culture ( 2200–1900 BC), formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now thought to be distinct from Early Andronovo cultures. Allentoft et al. (2015) concluded from their genetic studies that the Andronovo culture and the preceding Sintashta culture were derived from an eastern migration of the Corded Ware culture, given the higher proportion of ancestry matching the earlier farmers of Europe, similar to the admixture found in the genomes of the Corded Ware population.

Discovery

The name derives from the village of Andronovo in the Uzhursky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, where the Russian zoologist Arkadi Tugarinov discovered its first remains in 1914. Several graves were discovered, with skeletons in crouched positions, buried with richly decorated pottery. The Andronovo culture was first identified by the Russian archaeologist Sergei Teploukhov in the 1920s.

Dating and subcultures

thumb|upright=1.3|Archaeological cultures associated with [[Indo-Iranian migrations (after EIEC): The Andronovo, BMAC and Yaz cultures have often been associated with Indo-Iranian migrations. The Gandhara grave (or Swat), Cemetery H, Copper Hoard and Painted Grey Ware cultures are candidates for the Indo-Aryan migration into South Asia.]]

The culture of Sarazm (4th–3rd millennium BC) precedes the arrival of the Andronovo steppe culture in South Central Asia in the 2nd millennium BC.

Currently only two sub-cultures are considered as part of Andronovo culture: In the Forest steppe and steppe of the Trans-Urals; northern, western, and central Kazakhstan; western Siberia; reaching southern Central Asia. In Transoxiana region, and Kyzylkum Desert.

  • Fëdorovo or Fyodorovka (1900–1300 BC) At Forest steppe in Trans-Urals and Ingala Valley; Southern Siberia and Upper Yenissei; northern, central, and eastern Kazakhstan; Semirech'ye region; the Pamir and Tian Shan Mountains; and Xinjiang. In southern Siberia (earliest evidence of cremation and fire cult)
  • Alakul-Fëdorovo (1750–1550 BC). On the other hand, synchronous Alakul-Fedorovo sites mainly appeared in the second quarter of the second millennium BC, in Southern Urals, along with the persistence of the Alakul materials.

Other authors identify the following sub-culture also as part of Andronovo:

  • Alekseyevka-Sargary (1500–1000 BC) Late Bronze Age in northern Kazakhstan, contacts with Namazga VI in Turkmenia, Ingala Valley in the south of Tyumen Oblast, in Tobol.

Some authors have challenged the chronology and model of eastward spread due to increasing evidence for the earlier presence of these cultural features in parts of east Central Asia.

Geographic extent

The geographical extent of the culture is vast and difficult to delineate exactly. On its western fringes, it overlaps with the approximately contemporaneous, but distinct, Srubna culture in the Volga-Ural interfluvial. To the east, it reaches into the Minusinsk depression, with some sites as far west as the southern Ural Mountains, overlapping with the area of the earlier Afanasevo culture. Additional sites are scattered as far south as the Kopet Dag (Turkmenistan), the Pamir (Tajikistan) and the Tian Shan (Kyrgyzstan). The northern boundary vaguely corresponds to the beginning of the Taiga. In the Volga basin, interaction with the Srubna culture was the most intense and prolonged, and Federovo style pottery is found as far west as Volgograd. Mallory notes that the Tazabagyab culture south of Andronovo could be an offshoot of the former (or Srubna), alternatively the result of an amalgamation of steppe cultures and the Central Asian oasis cultures (Bishkent culture and Vakhsh culture).

thumb|upright=1.5|Dates of [[Minusinsk Basin cultures, at the easternmost edge of Adronovo culture (Summed probability distribution for new human bone dates, Afanasievo to Tagar cultures)]]

In the initial Sintashta-Petrovka phase,

Livestock, horse, and agriculture

Andronovo livestock included cattle, horses, sheep, goats and camels. Agriculture did not play an important role in the Andronovo economy.

Metallurgy

thumb|Andronovo bronze axes.

The Andronovo culture is notable for regional advances in metallurgy. Bronze objects were numerous, and workshops existed for working copper. spread over much of Eurasian region, from Southern Urals to Kashgar, a pottery made by late Bronze Age nomads.

Warfare

thumb|Chariot model, [[Arkaim|Arkaim museum]]

"It is likely that militarized elite, whose power was based on the physical control of fellow tribesmen and neighbors with the help of riding and fighting skills, was buried in the Novoilinovsky-2 burial ground. The rider has a significant advantage over the infantryman. There may be another explanation: These elite fulfilled the function of mediating conflicts within the collective, and therefore had power and high social status. Metaphorically, this kind of elite can be called Sheriffs of the Bronze Age" said Igor Chechushkov.

Burials

thumb|Reconstruction of an Andronovo burial. Lisakovsk Museum

The Andronovo dead were buried in timber or stone chambers under both round and rectangular kurgans (tumuli). Burials were accompanied by livestock, wheeled vehicles, cheek-pieces for horses, and weapons, ceramics and ornaments. Among the most notable remains are the burials of chariots, dating from around 2000 BC and possibly earlier. The chariots are found with paired horse-teams, and the ritual burial of the horse in a "head and hooves" cult has also been found.

At Kytmanovo in Russia between Mongolia and Kazakhstan, dated 1746–1626 BC, a strain of Yersinia pestis was extracted from a dead woman's tooth in a grave common to her and to two children. This strain's genes express flagellin, which triggers the human immune response. However, by contrast with other prehistoric Yersinia pestis bacteria, the strain does so weakly; later, historic plague does not express flagellin at all, accounting for its virulence. The Kytmanovo strain was therefore under selection toward becoming a plague (although it was not the plague). The three people in that grave all died at the same time, and the researcher believes that this para-plague is what killed them.

Ethnolinguistic affiliation with Indo-Iranians

thumb|upright=2|Early [[Indo-European migrations from the Pontic steppes and across Central Asia.]]

Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with early Indo-Iranian languages. It is credited with the invention of the spoke-wheeled chariot around 2000 BC, if we include the Sintashta culture, where the oldest known chariots have been found. The association between the Andronovo culture and the Indo-Iranians is corroborated by the distribution of Iranian place-names across the Andronovo horizon and by the historical evidence of dominance by various Iranian-speaking peoples, including the Saka (Scythians), Sarmatians and Alans, throughout the Andronovo horizon during the 1st millennium BC. It is conjectured that the language spoken was still in the Proto-Indo-Iranian stage.

Comparisons between the archaeological evidence of the Andronovo and textual evidence of Indo-Iranians (i. e. the Vedas and the Avesta) are frequently made to support the Indo-Iranian identity of the Andronovo. The modern explanations for the Indo-Iranianization of the Iranian plateau and the Indian subcontinent rely heavily on the supposition that the Andronovo expanded southwards into Central Asia or at least achieved linguistic dominance across the Bronze Age urban centres of the region, such as the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex. While the earlier phases of the Andronovo culture are regarded as co-ordinate with the late period of Indo-Iranian linguistic unity, it is likely that in the later period they constituted a branch of the Iranians. Mallory acknowledges the difficulties of making a case for expansions from Andronovo to northern South Asia, and that attempts to link the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures "only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans". He has developed the Kulturkugel model that has the Indo-Iranians taking over Bactria-Margiana cultural traits but preserving their language and religion while moving into Iran and India.

Based on its use by Indo-Aryans in Mitanni and Vedic India, its prior absence in the Near East and Harappan India, and its 17th–16th century BC attestation at the Andronovo site of Sintashta, Kuzmina (1994) argues that the chariot corroborates the identification of Andronovo as Indo-Iranian. Klejn (1974) and Brentjes (1981) found the Andronovo culture much too late for an Indo-Iranian identification since chariot-using Aryans appear in Mitanni by the 15th century BC. However, dated a chariot burial at Krivoye Lake to around 2000 BC.

Eugene Helimski has suggested that the Andronovo people spoke a separate branch of Indo-Iranian. He claims that borrowings in the Finno-Ugric languages support this view. Vladimir Napolskikh has proposed that borrowings in Finno-Ugric indicate that the language was specifically of the Indo-Aryan type.

Since older forms of Indo-Iranian words have been taken over in Uralic and Proto-Yeniseian, occupation by some other languages (also lost ones) cannot be ruled out altogether, at least for part of the Andronovo area, i. e., Uralic and Yeniseian.

Rasmus G. Bjørn (2022) describes the linguistic heritage of the Andronovo cultural complex as "Indo-Iranic dialect continuum", with a later split between Iranic and Indic. Early Iranic can be associated with later stages of the Andronovo horizon. Indo-Iranian derived loanwords via the Andronovo cultural complex can be found in both Proto-Uralic and later in Proto-Turkic, suggesting some forms of contact near the Altai Mountains (specifically the Minusinsk basin) and Mongolia respectively. Some loanwords related to horse pastoralism are also found in Old Chinese.

Physical appearance

thumb|Andronovo culture woman, dress reconstruction, [[Central State Museum of Kazakhstan|276x276px]]

In studies from the mid-2000s, the Andronovo have been described by archaeologists as having cranial features similar to ancient and modern European populations though these cranial features are not exclusive to Europeans. Andronovo skulls are similar to those of the Srubnaya culture and Sintashta culture, exhibiting features such as dolicocephaly. Through Iranian and Indo-Aryan migrations, this physical type expanded southwards and mixed with aboriginal peoples, contributing to the formation of modern populations of the northern Indian subcontinent.

In a study including Andronovo-horizon specimens from Aktogay, Kazakhstan, 100% of the Aktogai individuals had light hair, with 60% having light blond hair and the remaining 40% having light brown hair. 60% of this sample was brown eyed, while 40% had blue eyes. 80% had intermediate skin, while 20% had pale skin tones. Andronovo ancestry (c. 57%), in tandem with BMAC admixture (c. 43%), represents the later Iranian dispersal into the Iranian Plateau, while BMAC admixture is not found among the Indo-Aryan migrations into South Asia, suggesting two independent routes, one via the BMAC and one via the Inner Asian mountain corridor.

Keyser et al. (2009) published a study of the ancient Siberian cultures, the Andronovo culture, the Karasuk culture, the Tagar culture and the Tashtyk culture. Ten individuals of the Andronovo horizon in southern Siberia from 1800 BC to 1400 BC were surveyed. Extractions of mtDNA from nine individuals were determined to represent two samples of haplogroup U4 and single samples of Z1, T1, U2e, T4, H, K2b and U5a1. Extractions of Y-DNA from one individual was determined to belong to Y-DNA haplogroup C (but not C3), while the other two extractions were determined to belong to haplogroup R1a1a, which is thought to mark the eastward migration of the early Indo-Europeans. Of the individuals surveyed, only two (or 22%) were determined to be of Asian ancestry, while seven (or 78%) were determined to be of European ancestry, with the majority being light-skinned with predominantly light eyes and light hair.]]

A genetic study published in Nature in May 2018 examined the remains of an Andronovo female buried . She was found to be a carrier of the maternal haplogroup U2e1h.

In a genetic study published in Science in September 2019, a large number of remains from the Andronovo horizon was examined. The vast majority of Y-DNA extracted belonged to R1a1a1b or various subclades of it (particularly R1a1a1b2a2a). The majority of mtDNA samples extracted belonged to U, although other haplogroups also occurred. The people of the Andronovo culture were found to be closely genetically related to the people of the Corded Ware culture, the Potapovka culture, the Sintashta culture and Srubnaya culture. These were found to harbor mixed ancestry from the Yamnaya culture and peoples of the Central European Middle Neolithic. People in the northwestern areas of Andronovo were found to be "genetically largely homogeneous" and "genetically almost indistinguishable" from Sintashta people. The genetic data suggested that the Andronovo culture and its Sintastha predecessor were ultimately derived of a remigration of Central European peoples with steppe ancestry back into the steppe. This is in particular defined by the majority (n=12) of R-Z93 SNPs.

Manjusha Chintalapati, Nick Patterson, and Priya Moorjani (in a peer-reviewed paper, 18 July 2022) estimate through DATES (Distribution of Ancestry Tracts of Evolutionary Signals) that genetic characteristics, typical of Andronovo culture's people formed around 900 years before this archaeological culture appeared, 2900 BCE.

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File:Andronovo decorated bowl.jpg|Andronovo decorated bowl

File:Andronovo ceramics 4.png|Andronovo ceramics

File:Andronovo ceramics 2.png|Andronovo ceramics

File:Предметы Андроновской культуры. Andronovo culture artifacts.jpg|Andronovo tools, foundry molds and pottery

File:Andronovo axe and knife.jpg|Andronovo axe and knife

File:Spearheads (1, 2) and arrowheads (3–7) of the early Alakul (Petrovka) culture in Central Kazakhstan.png|Spearheads and arrowheads from central Kazakhstan

File:Drone photograph of the archaeological site of Semiyarka.png|Site of the large settlement of Semiyarka, Kazakhstan, c. 1600 BC

File:Andronovo area.png|Andronovo area.

File:Andronovo distribution.png|Andronovo distribution.